Spotify on Android: One Week On

I’ve been using Spotify on Android for just over a week now and must say I’m hugely impressed with it. Offline Playlists are certainly its killer feature and it’s so easy to use. Being able to easily store hour upon hour of your favourite music almost returns the feeling that you “own” the music. I previously looked how well Spotify Mobile performed streaming live during my journey walking home. It faired pretty well but I did experience the occasional gap in the live stream. However now that I’m used to Offline Playlists, comparing Spotify on Android with, say, the Last.fm app is not really valid any more (a better comparison would be with Android’s native Music player). After the jump: my suggested “Must Have” and “Nice to Have” feature requests.

Spotify for Android has already been downloaded between 10,000 – 50,000 times from the Android Market, a mere 8 days after its initial release. It’s had nearly 1,000 ratings with an average score of 4.5 out of 5! It is also one of the featured apps on the main Android Market page that everyone sees when going to the Market.

As with any piece of software, there’s always room for improvement. Here’s my list of requested features (plus a couple of bugs).

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Bugs

Spotify URIs don’t work in the search (can’t paste and search like on the desktop)

Doesn’t support landscape mode

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Must-Haves

Last.fm scrobbling

Album art for artist list views (Overview tab)

Make Spotify links from Browser work – FIXED!

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Nice-to-Haves

Sortable list of playlists (alphabetically, by most recent) or navigation options (Letter tabs like in your Contacts list). Even a Jump to End button would be nice, as I find I’m frequently scrolling and scrolling to the end of my list of playlists to play the most recent.

Move playlists up or down the list

Sortable playlists (sort by track, artist, album like in the desktop app)

Easy way to see just offline playlists while online

Indication of a playlist’s total playing time

A “More” button on the Home tab to see more new releases

Better caching so that loss of signal for a minute or so doesn’t stop the music – DONE!

About

The Pansentient League is a blog from Edinburgh-based writer Jer White (also known as Afront). It's mostly about music-streaming service Spotify, with a dose of synthpop music, Google Android, and the odd post or two about gadgets and science fiction.